Readers' rating:
Publishes
May 7, 2024
384 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
A subtle and masterful novel from a prescient voice on the cutting edge of spy literature.
David Ignatius is known for his uncanny ability, in novel after novel, to predict the next great national security headline. In Phantom Orbit, he presents a story both searing and topical, with stakes as far-reaching as outer space. It follows Ivan Volkov, a Russian student in Beijing, who discovers an unsolved puzzle in the writings of the seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler. He takes the puzzle to a senior scientist in the Chinese space program and declares his intention to solve it. Volkov returns to Moscow and continues his secret work. The puzzle holds untold consequences for space warfare.
The years pass, and they are not kind to Volkov. After the loss of his son, a prosecutor who'd been too tough on corruption, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Volkov makes the fraught decision to contact the CIA. He writes: Satellites are your enemies, especially your own... . Hidden codes can make time stop and turn north into south... . If you are smart, you will find me.
With this timely novel, Ignatius addresses our moment of renewed interest in space exploration amid geopolitical tumult. Phantom Orbit brims with the author's vital insights and casts Volkov as the man who, at the risk of his life, may be able to stop the Doomsday clock.
"Journalist and novelist Ignatius (The Paladin) delivers an engrossing, character-driven spy thriller about space warfare...This is contemporary cloak-and-dagger intrigue at its finest." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[A] cerebral, well-researched thriller...A space yarn filled with tension and excitement." ―Kirkus Reviews
This information about Phantom Orbit was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Ignatius, the best-selling author of Body of Lies and The Increment, among others, and prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post, has been covering the Middle East and the CIA for more than twenty-five years. He lives in Washington, DC.
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